“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In the past the crucifix was to you a symbol of the Roman Catholic church, and distasteful. [...]

[...] There is an old religious hangover here from the Catholic background. [...]

[...] As a Catholic youngster, she had a teacher named Sister Januarious in grade school. [...]

(Jane and I wonder about the coincidence involved in my selecting, by the blind method on page 158, a newspaper page that features an article about religion, and the Catholic religion at that. [...]

[...] A Catholic or a Jew possessing these beliefs is obviously out of step to some extent, and will feel guilty as he measures himself against them. [...]

(In the same average voice she began: “In the shadow of the image organized religion [at the same time my hands want to fly up], after it has been set up, has always been afraid of revelationary knowledge; to protect itself; and the Catholic Church in particular cast it in the form of a devil, which I was taught: the sin of pride, wanting to learn.”

We had a hard time believing him when Seth told us the very next evening, on April 23, that Jane’s sinful self thinks her physical symptoms are necessary “for the personality’s own good”; that that self has no conception that its policies have become self-defeating; that, following Catholic and non-Catholic Christianity, it believes that suffering is good for the soul; that the idea of the flesh itself being graced is, to it, blasphemous.

As he progressed with the series, Seth delved into Jane’s sinful self from a number of viewpoints: its birth and growth during her intense relationship with the Roman Catholic Church throughout her early years; the development of her very stubborn core beliefs; her creative dilemmas after she left the church in her late teens; the conflicts she began to experience after our marriage, involving on the one hand her sinful self and the religion she thought she’d left behind, and on the other hand science, art, writing, and the unconventional direction she discovered her natural, mystical abilities were taking via the Seth material; her growing fears of leading others astray; and the very real necessity for her—and for each individual—to achieve value fulfillment.

“They were these: that the entire world with its organization was kept together by certain stories, like those of the Roman Catholic Church; that it was dangerous beyond all knowing to look through the stories or examine them for the truth, and that all kinds of taboos existed to keep us from doing this, since … on the other side, so to speak, there was an incomprehensible frightening chaotic dimension, malevolent; powers beyond our imagining; and that to question the stories was to threaten not just personal survival but the fabric of reality as we know it. [...]

[...] Right now I’ll make just one point: The priest, burning Jane’s books in the backyard of the house she lived in, taught the growing girl in most specific terms that she had to protect her natural abilities and her inquiring mind even from the very institution—the Roman Catholic Church—that she had so strongly identified with.

Now: even as a young person, Ruburt was the type of person who was considered out of place, rebellious, or even slightly dangerous in any Roman Catholic congregation—particularly in the time of his own youth. [...]

[...] The Catholic idea of penance was mixed in here. [...]

[...] It could become as secondary to life as, say, the Roman Catholic Church is now, losing its hold upon world dominance, losing its claim of being the one official arbiter of reality.

[...] “You weren’t encouraged to read the Bible even in Catholic grade school,” she added. [...]

(Pause.) The Roman Catholic Church seized upon art, inserted its own strong symbolism, provided art with a recognizable religious, social, and political value. [...]

[...] He could not attend tonight’s session but left with us a question concerning transubstantiation; John wanted Seth’s comments on the literal results, if any, of this Catholic ceremony.

In a larger sense, for example, the Catholic Church was originally formed as a psychic organization, on psychic levels, by large groups of individuals, as the mass psyche formed the basis of Christianity. [...]

Now in the back of your mind, and you may yell at me later, conventional religion is symbolized by the Catholic religion because of its fantastic organization. [...]

[...] It was no coincidence that Father Traynor used to read Don Juan of Austria (in the Catholic Church the young Jane attended), for they knew each other at that time.

[...] Religion has been the cause of much prejudice and cruelty, but the bombs over Hiroshima were not caused by the Catholic Saint Teresa showering down any roses. [...]

[...] I was brought up a Catholic, but as I grew older I found it more and more difficult to accept the God of my ancestors. [...]

[...] Jane attended Saint Vincent’s, a Catholic school)

Now Loren was a priest in the Roman Catholic church. [...]

[...] It was a small church, not Catholic. [...]